Adding to the long (and growing) list of dog-related memoirs, Steve Duno’s Last Dog on the Hill: The Extraordinary Life of Lou tells the story of a dog who truly is extraordinary. Lou saves the lives of people and dogs, takes down criminals, and has a profound impact on just about every creature with whom he comes in contact.

Fate, if one believes in such things, plays a central role in Last Dog on the Hill, beginning with Duno’s first glimpse of Lou, his mother and littermates scurrying up a hill beside a northern California highway. Duno and his girlfriend stop the car and get out for a better look at the pups. Duno whistles, “just to see what would happen.” All of the dogs continue into the tree line at the top of the hill … except for one: “the last dog on the hill,” who, though feral, “made a mad downhill dash toward us, as if recognizing someone.”

When Duno hesitantly allowed the flea- and tick-infested, six-month-old Rottweiler/German Shepherd mix into his car, it marked the beginning of a nearly 16-year friendship. It was a friendship that would change the lives of both man and dog in more ways than Duno could have imagined were possible, perhaps most significantly by inspiring Duno to become a dog trainer and an author of pet care and training manuals. And while some of Duno’s ideas about dog training and “dominance theory” (barely noticeable in this book, but evident in some of his others) are outdated, his relationship with Lou is clearly based on love and trust, and is immensely rewarding for both of them, as well as those around them.

It’s easy to anthropomorphize when writing about dogs, and Duno does. But Lou, with his keen ability to sniff out bad guys and assist in the rehabilitation of fearful and aggressive dogs, provides a persuasive argument for anthropomorphizing, and doing so doesn’t affect the strength of Duno’s prose, which is engaging and even lyrical at times: “The essential crime committed against all dog owners is born of the love we hold for them, which, like the love of a child, runs deep. No parent should have to bury a child, they say, but that is what we dog owners must do, not once but time after time, throughout our lives. While we remain unchangeable to their sweet eyes, they run from birth to the grave in an instant of our own measure.”

Lou, not unlike Ted Kerasote’s Merle, is a once-in-a-lifetime dog who teaches even more than he learns, gives far more than he takes. Duno, in a fitting tribute to his best friend, offers Lou’s story to us, and we are better for it. As Duno puts it, “Lou set me straight. He gave me these words. He wrote this story.”